Phoenix: 'They keep telling me it’s all fixed, and I keep telling them no, it’s not. This is still wrong.'

When your child is born two months prematurely by emergency C-section and spends his first month in the neo-natal intensive care unit at the hospital, your sole focus as a parent ought to be on his well-being.

Unfortunately, as a result of the Phoenix pay system, Sebastienne Critchley wasn’t afforded that luxury.

The Edmonton woman’s son, Logan, was born on Nov. 26, 2016, at just 32 weeks. Instead of being with him in the ICU, the Employment and Social Development employee says she was often out in the hallway, on her phone with someone at the Phoenix pay centre in Miramichi, N.B., trying to get her record of employment, the form the government is required to provide within five days of a change in pay.

“At that point they were telling me that it could be six months to get an ROE and, of course, you can’t get maternity benefits without the ROE and you can’t get the top-up that the federal public service provides without the EI. And I’m saying, ‘I can’t go six months with no income. That’s not going to work.’

“It certainly can’t be proven,” she adds, “but some of the staff at the hospital were speculating that the ongoing long-term stress of the pay situation could have contributed to Logan’s premature delivery.”

For this was hardly Critchley’s introduction to Phoenix’s morale-crushing quirks. Six months earlier, in April 2016, after her department hopped aboard the ill-fated Phoenix train, she continued to be paid through a six-week medical leave she took.

At the time, though, she wasn’t unduly concerned. “It was a brand-new system,” she recalls thinking. “There were going to be a few kinks here and there.” It wasn’t a big deal, she told herself; it would all be fixed when she returned.

It wasn’t, not then and not in July when she needed another leave, this one for family reasons. She was anxious to get it fixed before her maternity leave, expected to begin in December, kicked in. But she was told that, as she was still being paid, her file was a low priority, and that it wouldn’t even be considered before October.

In October, meanwhile, one of her paycheques was withheld entirely, without notice. She was told that it was being applied to her overpayment — which she had been putting away in order to repay it.

“I said, ‘I appreciate that you’re finally trying to do a recovery, but you haven’t told me how much I owe, and you can’t just suddenly not pay me.’

“Their response? ‘We’ll get it figured out with you next pay.’”

That didn’t happen. Her son arrived and her pay didn’t, not until January. The compensation adviser she was dealing with told her that she owed about $15,000, a figure she agreed was close to correct. Then her compensation adviser stopped responding to her altogether. One pay centre worker told her she owed $7,500. Another said the figure was $22,000. None, however, could tell her how the figures were calculated.

Her T4 slip for 2016, though, suggested the opposite: that she was underpaid by about that amount. As a result, she was unable to use certain credits that her husband, a civilian with the RCMP, used instead. Critchley, 40, says it cost the couple $1,200 to have their taxes prepared last year, a far cry more than the $200 that the government has offered Phoenix-affected employees.

Her return from maternity leave last September marked the return of her paycheque woes. “Every pay period I have two or three paycheques with adjustments for prior year this, that and the other thing. Sometimes I get two pays showing up.”

When her final pay stub of 2017 arrived, she looked at the total deductions listed for the year — about $9,300. She then added up the year-to-date deductions by individual line item — income tax, EI, CPP, union dues and such — to discover a total of slightly more than $7,200, about $2,000 less than the $9,300.

“Where is that $2,000?” she asks. “They say, ‘Oh, well, it’s all right.’ No, it’s not. They still will not answer me. They just keep telling me it’s right, if I just look at the pay stub.

“Every day I have to chase people down. I am running myself ragged trying to repay money.

She’s discovered numerous discrepancies in her pay stubs, and when she received her T4 for 2017, Box 22, which shows her income tax deducted, was blank. “In addition to the missing income tax, amounts for CPP, EI, and union dues all don’t add up, either,” she says. “I’m happy to report that the $19.47 for my health care premium appears correct, though.

She knows she owes the government money, but she’s not convinced it’s the $43,000 she was recently told. “I said, ‘You know what? Put a hold on everything. You are not recovering anything until you can give me a detailed breakdown, line by line, of exactly what I owe and why, that I can take to an accountant of my choice to have verified.’”

A subsequent letter indicates she owes $28,500. She believes it’s more in the $22,000 to $23,000 range.

“It may be that when I do my taxes I may owe some of that $5,000 (difference) to CRA, but I’ll take that up with them. I have no issue repaying what I owe, but I should not have to put in this many hours fighting to say, ‘Do the job right.’”

Some nights she’s up until 2 a.m. trying to sort out her finances based on inaccurate pay stubs, while lack of sleep is a trigger for her anxiety and depression. “And at this point I don’t trust what I’m getting from the pay centre. I need to make sure that I have my thumb on what I actually owe, so that when they DO send me something like this $28,000, I can look at it and say, ‘No. Here’s why it’s wrong.’

“I’m done with this. I just want to give up. I’ve been beaten down to that point. They keep telling me it’s all fixed, and I keep telling them no, it’s not. This is still wrong.”

Last fall, the Phoenix problems drove her to withdraw her name from consideration for a new position. She’s still in the running for another, but says she’d be nervous about accepting it. “I wonder ‘How many more screw-ups is this going to generate?”

Last fall, she estimated that she’d spent more than 200 hours trying to resolve her Phoenix issues, and the number keeps climbing. Yet as she enters just her fifth year in the federal public service, she’s not ready to abandon her position.

“I could not ask for better managers, team leaders or co-workers,” she says, “and I’m not going to find that anywhere else. The people are what keep me going back every day.”

Additionally, she says, her job makes a difference in Canadians’ lives. “There are times that I’m able to keep people from living on the street, or I’m able to keep people in a position where they can get the medications they need to live. I’m making a difference for people, and that’s something that matters to me.”

(A spokesperson for Public Services, which is responsible for Phoenix, said privacy legislation prevents the department from discussing details of the employment and pay of individual federal government employees.)

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